Shagrua Lugrid
Sir Shagrua Edith Lugrid'Full name revealed in ''Dead Mount Death Play Volume 1, Episode 1: The Calamity, Alive and Well. (シャグルア Shagurua) the '''Calamity Crusher (災厄潰し Saiyaku Tsubushi) is a former knight of the Geldwood church's subjugation unit who possesses the Evil Eye. Appearance Shagrua has bluish grey hair, shadow green eyes, and has both ears pierced with green studs. When in combat, he wears grey armor with a type of blue robe or surcoat over it. Personality To be added. Chronology 'History' Shagrua is first discovered to possess the Evil Eye when he is three years old. He is the first "true possessor" to emerge in a long time, and his homeland and home village—deeply superstitious and fearful of the supernatural—is deeply entrenched in rumors which portend great misfortune concurrent with Evil Eye holders. As a result, the villagers resolve to exile his parents as punishment for birthing a 'cursed child'. Upon hearing a rumor that his organs can be sold for an immortality elixir, however, they change their mind and leak his home's location to marauding bandits. On the day originally planned for the exile, these bandits invade Shagrua's home and slaughter his entire family. Shagrua does not learn this until he is already a holy soldier of the Geldwood church and granted salvation, in addition to the fact that Geldwood later burned both the bandits and his fellow villagers to death. This knowledge does not come from Geldwood, which endeavored to keep him ignorant of the deeds; instead, he is told as much by the spirits of the bandits, villagers, and church soldiers caught in the crossfire who continue to haunt him and curse his name. That Geldwood is responsible for burning down his village troubles Shagrua for years to come. In order to drown out the spirits' jeers, Shagrua chooses to fight and throws himself into various battlefields' front lines, as the "driving member" of Geldwood's subjugation unit. From heretical cults and criminal syndicates to dragons and other monsters, more and more of his victims' spirits come to haunt him until they mingle with and drown out the voices of those from his past. Over the years, his exploits earn him the admiration of many as a hero and the title "Calamity Crusher." 'The Corpse God Encounter' Eventually, Geldwood's long-standing vendetta against the Corpse God—an undead necromancer without peer—reaches a day of reckoning. A Geldwood force, subjugation unit included, invades the Corpse God's undead labyrinth and challenges the Corpse God with the intention to vanquish him once and for all. Their initial assault does not bode well for them; they suffer injuries without inflicting much if any on the Corpse God, and mostly hold out as best they can until Shagrua arrives. Once Shagrua does, he finds that the Corpse God is—like him—also haunted by the countless souls of his victims. During their battle, he shatters one of the Corpse God's armored plates, revealing the Corpse God's true form: a human brain, contained in a jar suspended by chains. Where Shagrua condemns the Corpse God's monstrosity, the Corpse God compares the both of them and says they both take lives "for fun," each playing the role of the Grim Reaper. Declaring that their game has come to an end, he fills the air with magic spells whose patterns Shagrua neither recognizes nor trusts—spells that Shagrua charges at with the intention of stopping whatever the Corpse God is planning. A second before Shagrua's sword reaches him, the Corpse God vanishes in a flash of bright light—and so too vanish all the spirits haunting Shagrua, re-purposed as magic for the Corpse God's final, exceptionally powerful spell. In the aftermath, Shagrua confides to a Geldwood priestess that he is afraid he did not "complete his task." The Corpse God's spell felt like teleportation magic, and though Shagrua did see his soul with his Evil Eye, his disappearance feels suspiciously sudden. At this, the priestess informs him that Geldwood's observation unit cannot detect any traces of the Corpse God's soul, which she takes as proof that Shagrua saved the world. Shagrua remains unconvinced, already nurturing a seed of doubt from the Corpse God's forcible exorcism of his spirits. The doubt within him only grows as he and the priestess examine the books in the Corpse God's laboratory, most of which are written in ink visible only to the Evil Eye and otherwise appear blank in the priestess' eyes. One such book is the Corpse God's journal, which contains entries dating back to his time with his found family. The evident care he held for the children under his watch causes Shagrua to question whether the Corpse God was as irredeemably evil as he thought, and, with the question burning at the back of his mind, he scrutinizes the other specially-inked books with greater urgency. Some of the tomes contain essays on Geldwood's "underbelly"—the "other face" of the institution to which many Geldwood followers remain ignorant. These hidden truths, coupled with the journal, inexorably, irreversibly shake Shagrua's devotion to the Geldwood faith for good. Over the next few days, Shagrua holes himself up in the Geldwood cathedral's library and tirelessly researches the essay's claims so as to verify their truth. The effort alone in discovering the research room's hidden vault is backbreaking. When the priestess from before visits him in the library, Shagrua explains that he has been looking into the Corpse God and asks if she knows from which country the Corpse God hailed. The priestess dutifully recounts what she knows: that the Corpse God was a royal necromancer of an empire which, over one hundred years ago, collapsed within the span of a year. Shagrua, his voice distant, realizes she must be talking about the Byandy Peninsula—also known as the 'Abandoned Peninsula'. When she urges him to rest, joking that he looks like 'someone possessed', he falls silent for a time. Then, as if steeling himself, he decides to make 'that' his 'story': that the Corpse God used teleportation magic to switch his and Shagrua's souls, effectively killing Shagrua and taking over his body. Filled with trepidation, the priestess reminds him that switching a body and soul with a still-living being is impossible (or incredibly dangerous), to which Shagrua agrees: necromancers' possession is limited to dolls and corpses. However, he wants the priestess to tell Geldwood that the Corpse God "surpassed that hurdle." As she is still confused, and as Shagrua is fond of her, he confesses his break with the Geldwood faith and his investigation of Geldwood's corruption - which he is sure she knows nothing about. As he casts a sleeping spell on her, he requests she continue feigning ignorance to that end and tell the Church he has been possessed by the Corpse God (thus ensuring her safety among the church). Once the priestess falls asleep, Shagrua leaves the library carrying evidence proving Geldwood's corruption. Acting in the name of the Corpse God, he seeks out and assaults multiple high-ranking Church members—further ensuring that the rumors of the Calamity Crusher's demise and possession will spread throughout the land. With the Church's holy soldiers searching high and low for him, Shagrua leaves the Kingdom of Nyanild and heads west for the Abandoned Peninsula. The land is said to have been cursed after the fall of the empire, home to fearsome roaming ghosts and monsters, and Shagrua resolves to cast these spirits out as atonement for "the sins he'd committed against the Corpse God" and make the land habitable for people once more. While he does not know for certain whether the Corpse God is "good or bad," he hopes that the Corpse God's soul is somehow and somewhere still alive and well. 'Journey to Byandy Peninsula' Shagrua crosses the mountain range bordering Nyanild and the Abandoned Peninsula without much trouble; however, it becomes clear the mountains act akin to a force field when, as soon as he crosses the threshold into the Peninsula, he is besieged by demons, ghouls, and hives of unfamiliar flesh-eating insects. He has more hostile encounters with monsters over the next several days' worth of marching toward the far end of the peninsula, but the frequency of such encounters decreases the closer he draws to the capital—something which surprises him, as he had expected it to become only more dangerous. One night, still a fair distance away from the capital, Shagrua pitches a tent on sandy ground and reads a report on the Abandoned Peninsula which he had taken from Geldwood before setting off on his journey. He continues to ponder the last several days' events and the strange drop in the number of spirits while he uses magic to start a fire and heats up food, and keeps an uneventful watch for spirits and demons while he eats. When Shagrua reaches for sand with which he can snuff out the fire and sees grass, he is alarmed to find that the surrounding barren desert has been transformed into a rich green forest—one so dense and deep that the newfound overhead foliage nearly blocks out the starlight completely. Seeds as large as human heads barrel at high speed toward Shagrua from the forest's depths; via magic, Shagrua splits one of his burning firelogs mid-air into whizzing fire arrows which neutralize the seeds one at a time. The surrounding trees immediately been closing in on Shagrua, roots writhing, and he uses his Evil Eye to pinpoint the 'soul' controlling them; once he does, he sends the massive compound spell Hellfire Python scorching through the forest to burn away the trees surrounding the soul in question. Shagrua, himself surrounded by a protective sphere of wind spirits, is about to set off after the spell when the voice of a young girl calls out from the direction of the 'soul'. The girl acknowledges the skill needed to employ such a spell but observes that Shagrua used a Geldwood religion martial art when he stomped to make the firewood float, meaning that he is likely a Geldwood spy whom she ought to attack outright; however, as she doubts she could beat him, she suggests they each return to whence they came. The suggestion is not warmly received, as Shagrua has no place to which he can return, and the girl hurriedly emphasizes her initial intention had not been to kill him—she simply heard that a stranger was approaching the capital and decided to scare him back home. Having decided not to give up after all, she transmogrifies the bark of the still-standing trees into ice which can withstand the spell's lava. This display of magic is on an incomparably higher level to the previous attack and so Shagrua unsheathes his sword; the girl's local accent in theory affiliates her with the Byandy empire, and her hostility is still hostility no matter the lack of killing intent. A new surge of unfamiliar energy stops him in his tracks, belying a strange woman—Izliz Swordflail—wearing a beast's skull who steps out of the forest and calls for Romelka to cease hostilities. Romelka, still unseen from within her tree, asks Izliz if she knows Shagrua; Izliz smoothly identifies Shagrua as the Geldwood group's treasured asset Calamity Crusher. That he treated Romelka—once the imperial court's seventh-highest sorcerer—as a child does not surprise her, since he is the one who defeated the "fourth-most-capable necromancer" Corpse God. That he is a 'disgraced' follower furthermore matters not to her, and she either does not hear or chooses to ignore Shagrua's eschewing of the follower label. In the next moment, "hundreds of thousands" of monster corpses burst out of the forest. Shagrua, now at the mercy of magical trees and zombie soldiers alike, is stunned by the truth that the woman is a necromancer—and by the possibility she just might be more powerful than the Corpse God. Abilities To be added. References Category:Characters Category:Male Characters Category:Humans